WHAT
IS UV TEXTURING
By José Pablo Luna Sánchez. 2006
A texture is basically a
square or rectangle that contains color patterns that are used to wrap a 3D
mesh.
They use a coordinate system ranging from 0 to 1 for horizontal (U) and vertical
(V) coordinates.
Some softwares uses bottom left corner of the texture as (0,0) coordinate,
and some use the top left corner.
Anim8or uses bottom left corner as (U,V) = (0,0).
If we think that a texture
is like a sheet for a very elastic paper model, we may think that we might draw
triangles or polygons and such triangles or polygons have vertices.
The resulting paper model on the texture will be used to wrap a 3D model in
a very elastic way.
Those vertices will have
a certain UV coordinate.
The UV coordinates are the point where texture vertices are attached to mesh
vertices.
So using UV coordinates we could buld very complex paper model patterns.
Unfortunately we don´t
have too many freeware tools to make very complex UV texturing.
But UV mapper does the trick for most of users.
Anim8or is basically a modeller,
so its UV texturing capabilities are limited.
That's where UV mapper comes into action.
UV mapper allows several types of projections.
It means that depending
on the type of projection, each vertex will have a different UV coordinate assigned
to it.
Unlike the very flexible UV texturing used in the space shutlle texture that
is shown above, UV mapper allows these fixed types of projection, but for most
of purposes, those types are just enough.
Only a very complex mesh (like a space shuttle) would require some special ways
to texture it.
When you select Settings
> Component > Texture UV, in Anim8or, it will make a planar projection.
If you check the option to apply it interactively, you will be able to rotate
the planar projection axis only, but it remains planar.
Planar is good for some simple meshes, but some more complex meshes, like the
rocket of this tutorial, will require UV mapper, for we need to wrap a cylinder.
So UV mapper remains a good option for texturing, despite of its limitations.